It’s time to be honest with ourselves. The Royal Navy is broken
The Senior Service is being asked to do too much with too little. Something has to give
www.telegraph.co.uk
Meanwhile apart from the USN shipyards we've news the RN is a severe state of disrepair. No news about the various Pommie shipyards , Pops , but if the RN is in such a state of disrepair , budgets are being slashed , Rule Brittania , Brittania rule the waves may well have occurred last millenium which surprisingly enough it did , only a die hard optimist will think the Oz submarine deal is still intact & that optimist isn't around for quite some time now unless of course , you've replaced him.
I can see why Little Britain muscled Le Francais out & the Americans then squeezed themselves into a menage a trois with you & the Pommies. The former was broke as hell & this deal was the key to bail out it's shipyards & naval industry , possibly subsidise their budget too & the Americans jumped in to avoid losing their vice like grip over Aussie balls.
Can't afford to see your strategic asset gallivanting with prospective competitors even if they happen to be allies today , can we now Pops?
It’s time to be honest with ourselves. The Royal Navy is broken
Tom SharpeFri 29 August 2025 at 8:34 am CEST
6 min read
Crew of HMS Prince of Wales (R09) at Tokyo International Cruise Terminal, Aug 28 - RODRIGO MARIN/EPA/Shutterstock/Shutterstock
Editorial
HMS Daring, the first of our six Type 45 destroyers, has been alongside now for 3000 days, as this paper recently reported. What struck me was the Pavlovian MoD response, “we continue to meet all our operational tasking”. This upsets me a lot. For one thing, in the case of our nuclear attack submarines (SSNs), whose predicament is worse even than that of our beleaguered destroyers, it clearly isn’t true. I’m not sure which is worse; that we frequently have no SSNs at sea at all or that we exist in a culture that can’t admit it.
The reason I’m certain that in the case of SSNs we are not making our operational commitments is that we have a hundred thousand tons of Carrier Strike Group on the other side of the world just now with no British submarine in attendance. This is a fail.
The planning assumptions around strike group deployments determine what escorts the carrier should have at any given time, and these will vary depending on where the carrier is. In the North Atlantic, it might be escorted by just one frigate. In the Red Sea, it will be everything we have plus some US destroyers, please.
In the Indo-Pacific I guarantee the SSN would be on the list for pretty obvious reasons, but it’s not there. And it’s not that one has been detached to work with someone else nearby at, say, three days’ notice to scuttle back. Nope, of the five we have, just one is working, and that one is back in the UK. This is not meeting either the doctrine or the operational requirements. And forget the strike group – who is doing SSN tasking around Britain now?
SSN availability is not the only nuclear-related issue we have. Our deterrent submarines are old and their replacements are very late. This and a maintenance backlog means their crews are increasingly being asked to conduct six-month patrols. That’s six months in a steel tube, at depth, with no view and no contact home, creeping around to remain undetected and waiting for the signal they hope never comes. When the previous class of “bomber” – the R boats – were getting long in the tooth, they ran the odd patrol over three and a half months, and that was deemed “unacceptable and must never be repeated”. But here we are adding 50 days to this. Talk to any accident investigator, and they will tell you that “normalising exceptional” is a fast track to disaster.
And so it goes on. Behind these two on the podium lies the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the logistic glue that holds our deployable navy together. We are down to just 10 of these ships now, and crew numbers and maintenance issues mean that we can currently operate about four: one tanker with the strike group, one in the UK, a surveillance vessel and our single amphibious vessel that rejoined the fleet last week.
To repeat, we currently have only one vessel capable of amphibious operations, and two weeks ago, that number was zero. The venerable RFA Argus lost her safety certification recently to the extent where she is not even allowed to change berths, much less make it back to base port, and RFA Stirling Castle, our sole mine countermeasures mothership, was just moved into the Royal Navy because the RFA can’t crew her. The only Solid Support ship we have, RFA Fort Victoria, is not fit for sea so we had to rely on this capability being provided by Norway for the carrier strike deployment. Alliances are great if you choose to use them; bad if you have to.
That’s the podium full and we haven’t even got to the Type 45 destroyers yet. Nor have we mentioned that we are down to just eight anti-submarine frigates, many of which don’t have surface-to-surface missiles, making them rather an embarrassment when they escort heavily armed Russian warships through the Channel. The Type 23 frigate was designed with a hull life of 18 years. The ones we have left are at 30 and counting and are rotting from the inside out. Their replacements, the Type 26, are at least being built but very late, hence us having to run the 23s way beyond their design life.
We have two carriers but the largest number of jets we can send to sea is half the number the ship was designed for, on only one of them. And these jets are poorly armed: they aren’t due to have a proper stand-off strike weapon until next decade. I won’t even start on helicopters or missile stocks.
We are doing the most complex military operations on the planet and are doing so on a shoestring. Our outstanding sailors can only make up so much of the shortfall.
2203 Royal Navy future attack-submarine SSNR class
I was going to offer some solutions now, but they all run up against the same reality: we are trying to run Cold War-level armed forces on less than half of Cold War spending, with no real plans for this to change other than relabelling a lot of non-Defence spending. When we do spend some money on actual real Defence, we seem to care more about job creation schemes than actually buying kit.
The new Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ) was set up to help here, but as time goes on, it is looking increasingly like a deckchair arranging exercise. That no one seems too keen to take on the new and important role in the MSHQ leadership quad – the National Armaments Director – is a very bad sign.
Waterfront support infrastructure needs a dramatic boost. This is a huge topic but take Project Euston as an example. This is supposed to improve nuclear infrastructure in Faslane – the problem that triggered this article. But is it happening or not? No one seems to know. Maybe we’re waiting for the next defence investment paper or something – there seems to be a lot of that these days. Same with the replacement amphibious ships and destroyers, which, as I made clear before, are already late. And we will certainly be off the pace in the transition to autonomy and AI without a shift in culture, risk appetite and improved ability to work with smaller enterprises.
Probably more important than any of this is our people. Recruitment in the RN is now OK; retention is not. If we don’t fix that, the rest is moot. We have always asked our people to do more with less – it’s the Navy way – but that wedge is too thin now and something is about to break.
Today, we neither have the navy we need nor deserve. If you wring it dry for maximum short term output it can still do extraordinary things – see the carrier strike deployment – but decades of kicking the defence can down the road, extraordinary levels of waste and inefficiency along the way and a culture where the Royal Navy says “yes, minister” and does as it’s told and the Ministry blandly says “we’re meeting all operational commitments” when it’s obvious we are not, and here we are.
The solutions are expensive, complex and require a cultural and leadership reset. But if we don’t start with honesty, inwards, upwards and outward, then nothing will change until it’s too late.
I always look at the news when the French go off, It's normally compensating for a French failure
So I read that Canada rejected the French Barracuda sub
So I read that Canada rejected the French Barracuda sub
What are the contributions of the other two in this alliance? Isn't AUKUS a completely U.S dependent entity now? This is what Aussie Navy currently has as of today:
Total Fleet Size: Approximately 43-50 active vessels
I have seen a few of their def. enthusiasts talk a lot about their capabilities. When asked about the fleet size apart from snide remarks, I received little to no answers.
I fail to understand how they are supposed to stand up to the PLAAF and PLAN. This alliance is entirely driven by the USN to be honest.
Aukus, is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States intended to "promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable.
Apart from this being another coalition in the Pacific...do not see much coming from this particular grouping.
Total Fleet Size: Approximately 43-50 active vessels
Active Royal Australian Navy Fleet (2025)
| Vessel Type | Class | Number Active | Notable Vessels |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amphibious Warfare | Canberra-class LHD | 2 | HMAS Adelaide, HMAS Canberra |
| Destroyers | Hobart-class | 3 | Air warfare destroyers |
| Frigates | Anzac-class | 7 | Surface combatant force |
| Submarines | Collins-class | 6 | Conventional submarines |
| Patrol Vessels | Cape-class | 8+ | HMAS Cape Capricorn |
| Patrol Boats | Armidale-class | 3 | Patrol boat operations |
| Support Vessels | Various classes | 12+ | Non-commissioned vessels |
I have seen a few of their def. enthusiasts talk a lot about their capabilities. When asked about the fleet size apart from snide remarks, I received little to no answers.
I fail to understand how they are supposed to stand up to the PLAAF and PLAN. This alliance is entirely driven by the USN to be honest.
Aukus, is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States intended to "promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable.
Apart from this being another coalition in the Pacific...do not see much coming from this particular grouping.
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The Brits and the Aussies find these facts hard to accept. I believe Tom has raised similar concerns in the past as well.It’s time to be honest with ourselves. The Royal Navy is broken
Tom Sharpe
Fri 29 August 2025 at 8:34 am CEST
6 min read
Crew of HMS Prince of Wales (R09) at Tokyo International Cruise Terminal, Aug 28 - RODRIGO MARIN/EPA/Shutterstock/Shutterstock
Editorial
HMS Daring, the first of our six Type 45 destroyers, has been alongside now for 3000 days, as this paper recently reported. What struck me was the Pavlovian MoD response, “we continue to meet all our operational tasking”. This upsets me a lot. For one thing, in the case of our nuclear attack submarines (SSNs), whose predicament is worse even than that of our beleaguered destroyers, it clearly isn’t true. I’m not sure which is worse; that we frequently have no SSNs at sea at all or that we exist in a culture that can’t admit it.
The reason I’m certain that in the case of SSNs we are not making our operational commitments is that we have a hundred thousand tons of Carrier Strike Group on the other side of the world just now with no British submarine in attendance. This is a fail.
The planning assumptions around strike group deployments determine what escorts the carrier should have at any given time, and these will vary depending on where the carrier is. In the North Atlantic, it might be escorted by just one frigate. In the Red Sea, it will be everything we have plus some US destroyers, please.
In the Indo-Pacific I guarantee the SSN would be on the list for pretty obvious reasons, but it’s not there. And it’s not that one has been detached to work with someone else nearby at, say, three days’ notice to scuttle back. Nope, of the five we have, just one is working, and that one is back in the UK. This is not meeting either the doctrine or the operational requirements. And forget the strike group – who is doing SSN tasking around Britain now?
SSN availability is not the only nuclear-related issue we have. Our deterrent submarines are old and their replacements are very late. This and a maintenance backlog means their crews are increasingly being asked to conduct six-month patrols. That’s six months in a steel tube, at depth, with no view and no contact home, creeping around to remain undetected and waiting for the signal they hope never comes. When the previous class of “bomber” – the R boats – were getting long in the tooth, they ran the odd patrol over three and a half months, and that was deemed “unacceptable and must never be repeated”. But here we are adding 50 days to this. Talk to any accident investigator, and they will tell you that “normalising exceptional” is a fast track to disaster.
And so it goes on. Behind these two on the podium lies the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the logistic glue that holds our deployable navy together. We are down to just 10 of these ships now, and crew numbers and maintenance issues mean that we can currently operate about four: one tanker with the strike group, one in the UK, a surveillance vessel and our single amphibious vessel that rejoined the fleet last week.
To repeat, we currently have only one vessel capable of amphibious operations, and two weeks ago, that number was zero. The venerable RFA Argus lost her safety certification recently to the extent where she is not even allowed to change berths, much less make it back to base port, and RFA Stirling Castle, our sole mine countermeasures mothership, was just moved into the Royal Navy because the RFA can’t crew her. The only Solid Support ship we have, RFA Fort Victoria, is not fit for sea so we had to rely on this capability being provided by Norway for the carrier strike deployment. Alliances are great if you choose to use them; bad if you have to.
That’s the podium full and we haven’t even got to the Type 45 destroyers yet. Nor have we mentioned that we are down to just eight anti-submarine frigates, many of which don’t have surface-to-surface missiles, making them rather an embarrassment when they escort heavily armed Russian warships through the Channel. The Type 23 frigate was designed with a hull life of 18 years. The ones we have left are at 30 and counting and are rotting from the inside out. Their replacements, the Type 26, are at least being built but very late, hence us having to run the 23s way beyond their design life.
We have two carriers but the largest number of jets we can send to sea is half the number the ship was designed for, on only one of them. And these jets are poorly armed: they aren’t due to have a proper stand-off strike weapon until next decade. I won’t even start on helicopters or missile stocks.
We are doing the most complex military operations on the planet and are doing so on a shoestring. Our outstanding sailors can only make up so much of the shortfall.
2203 Royal Navy future attack-submarine SSNR class
I was going to offer some solutions now, but they all run up against the same reality: we are trying to run Cold War-level armed forces on less than half of Cold War spending, with no real plans for this to change other than relabelling a lot of non-Defence spending. When we do spend some money on actual real Defence, we seem to care more about job creation schemes than actually buying kit.
The new Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ) was set up to help here, but as time goes on, it is looking increasingly like a deckchair arranging exercise. That no one seems too keen to take on the new and important role in the MSHQ leadership quad – the National Armaments Director – is a very bad sign.
Waterfront support infrastructure needs a dramatic boost. This is a huge topic but take Project Euston as an example. This is supposed to improve nuclear infrastructure in Faslane – the problem that triggered this article. But is it happening or not? No one seems to know. Maybe we’re waiting for the next defence investment paper or something – there seems to be a lot of that these days. Same with the replacement amphibious ships and destroyers, which, as I made clear before, are already late. And we will certainly be off the pace in the transition to autonomy and AI without a shift in culture, risk appetite and improved ability to work with smaller enterprises.
Probably more important than any of this is our people. Recruitment in the RN is now OK; retention is not. If we don’t fix that, the rest is moot. We have always asked our people to do more with less – it’s the Navy way – but that wedge is too thin now and something is about to break.
Today, we neither have the navy we need nor deserve. If you wring it dry for maximum short term output it can still do extraordinary things – see the carrier strike deployment – but decades of kicking the defence can down the road, extraordinary levels of waste and inefficiency along the way and a culture where the Royal Navy says “yes, minister” and does as it’s told and the Ministry blandly says “we’re meeting all operational commitments” when it’s obvious we are not, and here we are.
The solutions are expensive, complex and require a cultural and leadership reset. But if we don’t start with honesty, inwards, upwards and outward, then nothing will change until it’s too late.
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What were the facts in that story? It was too pathetic for me to bother to address before, Other than being a click bait hit piece
1,
the first of the fleet is harder for some reason and had issues,
"HMS Daring has now begun crewing ahead of trials. Planning indicates that shakedown could begin in December 2025, though January 2026 is considered the more likely timeframe.
The other five Type 45 destroyers are at different stages of the same process. HMS Dauntless has returned to operations after completing her PIP work, Current plans envisage that all six destroyers will have completed the programme by 2028.
Parliamentary statements have confirmed that no PIP-related technical issues have been reported on ships that have completed the work."
2,
5 subs give you 1 and a half available, obviously it would be normal to have 1 available half time, and 2 available the other half of the time
As to Australia's fleet size, with 25m people, it's pretty good, with new capital ships being built
Your Fleet with 1,5 billion people, is less per capita, perhaps you should look in your own backyard first
I asked about what Australia bought to the table and I get swung at asking 'Indian' - What about your fleet size? These guys will defend TW. Good to know that things never change. Thanks for the lesson.
Everything is a clickbait and a hit piece. Nothing can go wrong with the British Navy or AUKUS. It was my mistake for replying to the Frenchmen or for having an opinion.
You can't see what a click bait hit piece is? You are blind
This is factual and not a click bait hit piece
British warship passes 3,000 days out of service
HMS Daring has been out of service for over 3,000 days — longer than it took to build her. Now, after years of refit and regeneration, she is crewing up for trials and getting ready to rejoin the fleet.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
For a force that is so ally dependent, it is not a surprise. The state of affairs of this entire coalition is U.S dependent.It’s time to be honest with ourselves. The Royal Navy is broken
The Senior Service is being asked to do too much with too little. Something has to give
Meanwhile apart from the USN shipyards we've news the RN is a severe state of disrepair. No news about the various Pommie shipyards , Pops , but if the RN is in such a state of disrepair , budgets are being slashed , Rule Brittania , Brittania rule the waves may well have occurred last millenium which surprisingly enough it did , only a die hard optimist will think the Oz submarine deal is still intact & that optimist isn't around for quite some time now unless of course , you've replaced him.
I can see why Little Britain muscled Le Francais out & the Americans then squeezed themselves into a menage a trois with you & the Pommies. The former was broke as hell & this deal was the key to bail out it's shipyards & naval industry , possibly subsidise their budget too & the Americans jumped in to avoid losing their vice like grip over Aussie balls.
Can't afford to see your strategic asset gallivanting with prospective competitors even if they happen to be allies today , can we now Pops?
Someone was hurt when I questioned the state of their Navy (considering the lofty goals of defending Japan and TW) and gave it back to me saying 'What about your fleet size'. *sigh* it's tough out here in AUKUS land.
Good to know.You can't see what a click bait hit piece is? You are blind
This is factual and not a click bait hit piece
British warship passes 3,000 days out of service
HMS Daring has been out of service for over 3,000 days — longer than it took to build her. Now, after years of refit and regeneration, she is crewing up for trials and getting ready to rejoin the fleet.
I do not know where BMD went. He would really go hammer and tongs on this stuff. He would've been the vanguard for the 'Numba one' British Navy.
The whole of Europe' 450m is dependant on the US coalition, Why do you think it is strange that Australia's 25m is also dependant?
As to coalitions, India matches Singapore and Australia, in strength, there are several 2 nation groupings that do
Military capability data - Lowy Institute Asia Power Index
Military capability – conventional military strength; measured in terms of defence spending, armed forces and organisation, weapons and platforms, signature capabilities and Asian military posture.
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Do you think this is a good thing? Everything hinges on a singular partner. EU has already started to find out certain downsides to this arrangement.
I'm just giving the reality, whether it's good or bad is an opinion, which nations act on, I think everyone is questioning the current administration,
India by itself, isn't going to be able to take on China and pak, if the
hits the fan, So you tell me what alliances are worthNoted. I agree. India as things stand today, would not be able to engage China conventionally in case of a two front war and win. Form a formal alliance with whom? Americans? I don't think that's feasible due to a host of factors .India has gone at it alone for a long time. I do not expect it to change. The only thing that the Indians can change is invest even more in their own National security. Increase in budget is almost a necessity (they spend less than 3 percent on their military).I'm just giving the reality, whether it's good or bad is an opinion, which nations act on, I think everyone is questioning the current administration,
India by itself, isn't going to be able to take on China and pak, if the
My view when it comes to alliances is simple. Everyone pulls their weight. I see many who have not done so for a while. I do not see that changing quickly. An alliance with an uneven structure ends up growing complacent (a single entity doing all the heavy lifting). The sheer helplessness when it comes Ukraine was eye opening (this spans both Biden and the current administration). So, I would advise anyone to form alliance only when you are truly capable of committing to it.
I would recommend that both the British and Australian forces wake up quickly. Alliances are nice. However, it is your own capability that ensures smooth sailing. The purchase of new ships from Japan is a big step forward.
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Why do you think India is not part of any alliance and maintains the world's biggest standing army? When shit hits the fan, that's what nukes are for.India by itself, isn't going to be able to take on China and pak, if the
Their entire doctrine is based on alliances. They've been let down for the first time in Europe. If these guys don't wake up now, there's no saving them. However, I do understand their whole alliance dependency. If the U.S is not involved, the Chinese can take over easily. Same goes for the Russians in Europe.
Same goes for us as well. We've talked about multipolarity. Look at fleet size of IN and the squadrons of the IAF.
Isn't a lot of your army subsite policemen? Do you think an army is measured by just the number of men? Many a well trained and equipped smaller force has destroyed a more manned force,
Pak and India exchange nukes, while China sits back and smiles at their proxy, Would India and Pak be silly enough to exchange nukes?
They are not doing anything wrong. An alliance is the best possible path for them. They simply don't have enough manpower unless they stick together. The mindset is based on Anglo-Saxon aka "white men" sticks together. Which actually works over the years.
No, Indian army alone is 1.1 million. If you add paramilitary and reserve it will be double of that.
If we exchange nukes no one can sit back. They are a proxy not an alliance. Huge difference.